There is nothing I can say to you that will prove beyond a shadow of doubt what we Christians call the reality of the Resurrection. Ultimately, as you know, it is a matter of faith and of the willingness to believe and trust in something that can be experienced or theorized but not proven. Occasionally we get an example of this even from science. This January, for instance, I was fascinated by an article in the New York Times about two scientists from the California Institute of Technology who posited the theoretical possibility of a new planet in our solar system which they refer to as “Planet Nine”. The mass of this new planet, they said, was ten times that of the Earth. It is located in the far outer regions of space, some 50 billion miles from earth and 20 times further from the sun than Neptune, the most distant planet known to us. What especially caught my attention in the article was the statement that even though the scientists had no direct evidence that the planet existed, they were sure that it did. “It must be there,” one of them said, because we’ve observed the way objects in the outer part of the solar system move, and “nothing else could exert such influence”. Perhaps someday Planet Nine will be seen by one of our advanced telescopes and thus its existence will be proven, but for now, and this is my point, the only evidence we have of its existence is the influence it has on the objects around it. So it is also with the Resurrection. We cannot go back in history to prove it. Nor will it ever be seen by the most advanced telescopes on earth. Yet this does not mean that the Resurrection never happened. We know of it and believe in it because of the influence it had and continues to have on those who follow Jesus.

Easter is early this year, and in many places across this church trees will still be bare and fields barren. It might even snow. But on Easter morning we will gather to greet the risen Son and give thanks to God for the new life we have in Jesus Christ. Two things come to mind this Easter when there is still only the hint of spring: Jesus’ words to his disciples just before his crucifixion and a hymn. Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus was talking about his death, but he was also assuring his disciples and us that death is not the end, that, though it might seem impossible and even terrifying to step into the void, God brings life out of death.

The hymn is ELW 379. Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been; love is come again like wheat arising green.

The tune is actually a French Christmas carol. How perfect that, in the bleak midwinter, the promise of spring was planted. St. Paul wrote, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” We have already fallen into the earth and died. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We will not remain alone. We will bear fruit. The seed has been planted in all the barren places in the world and in our lives. That gives us the power and the hope – especially in the face of our brokenness – to see life where the world only sees death ... in refugee camps and hospice units, in parched earth and in floods, in oppression and denied justice we are bold to confess. Now the green blade rises. Now love lives again. Now love comes again like wheat arising green. Christ is risen.

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," on a trip that detours into the Georgia woods, a family encounters a murderous criminal known only as "the Misfit." As he cold-heartedly and systematically shoots to death each member of the family, the Misfit keeps talking about Jesus. He tells the frightened grandmother, "If Jesushas been raised from the dead, he shouldn’t have. He done thrown everything out of kilter. He should have stayed dead." In rising from the dead, Jesus has indeed "done thrown everything out of kilter." A Christian is someone who believes that God raised Jesus from the dead. And it’s a belief that has always been in contention. Thomas is by no means unusual but a reminder of the patent absurdity of such a thing happening. First century people may not have been scientists, but they all knew that dead people don’t rise from the dead. And in every age, belief in the Resurrection of Jesus must overcome a strong prior prejudice against the possibility of such a thing happening, because it runs counter to our expectation based on everyday experience. The resurrection is a jolt. So today I want to assert before you a few core, central things. We believe, against our natural tendencies to disbelieve, in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The entire structure of the Christian faith stands or falls upon the fact of Jesus being raised by God from the dead. "Who is God? What is God up to in the world? Who are we as children of God? What are we supposed to be up to?" All these questions are answered through the resurrection: God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist. And Christians have no other Godthan the one who creates new life from the dead. Without the resurrection, we are without hope. With the resurrection, through all the difficulties of life, we can go on because we know the end of the story. The end is in the strong hands of God who raised Jesus from the dead. Without the resurrection we have nothing to say to a hurting, unsteady world. With the Resurrection we have truly good news. Christianity is founded on a fact, an astounding, unexpected, but nevertheless real event: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All human history, all human destiny, is seen in the light of this event, the core, founding, irreducible event upon which our faith rests. "He done thrown everything out of kilter."